Although communicative purposes are an important element in language production, few studies investigate the extent to which they might affect referential choices. In this study we contrast two tasks with different purposes: identification and route directions giving. In Experiment 1 speakers referred to a target building nearby or further away so…

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) surveys are the most widely used tool for collecting higher education student feedback to inform academic quality improvement, promotion and recruitment processes. Malicious and abusive student comments in SET surveys have the potential to harm the wellbeing and career prospects of academics. Despite much…

This study is based on the results of the research which aimed (1) to identify the cohesive devices used by Leo Tolstoy in "A grain as Big as a Hen's Egg as proposed by Halliday & Hasan and (2) to find whether substitution and ellipsis from the same story could be identified by the seven English Major students doing the Discourse Analysis…

This article investigates how the use of the term "immersion" to describe one's experience abroad performatively interpellates individuals and reproduces power relations. A collaboration between an anthropologist (Doerr) and a study-abroad student (Suarez), it analyzes the student's interpretation of three types of experience he had in…

In this paper, we present the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) for the reliable detection of metaphoric language that may be interpreted using extant vocational psychology theory. Metaphors are ubiquitous in communication and carry influential meaning for people. To illustrate MIPVU, we use transcripts of interviews…

Teaching simulations such as scriptwriting tasks offer a novel way to support pre-service teachers in gaining diagnostic competencies and in guiding students to work through difficulties. We first report on the theory-driven development of a scriptwriting task, specifically the theoretically-founded language- and accompanying content-related…

This article examines the corporate branding efforts of Singapore's publicly funded higher education institutions within a context of neoliberal marketization. Adopting a discourse-analytic perspective, it examines the kind of branding approaches employed by Singapore's universities and polytechnics, and how these approaches are realized…

There has been limited research focusing on the place of culture and resulting teaching and learning identities in EFL and how these issues impact on EFL policy, curriculum and enacted curriculum, especially textbooks. Even less research has focussed on these issues in the Gulf context. Some international research has explored the role of culture…

In both signed and spoken languages, pointing serves to direct an addressee's attention to a particular entity. This entity may be either present or absent in the physical context of the conversation. In this article we focus on pointing directed to nonspeaker/nonaddressee referents in Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal,…

Poststructuralist perspectives on the discursive construction of identity and critical approaches to linguistics, discourse analysis, and language testing have contributed to a growing awareness of the complex social nature of performance in speaking tests. In this article, I explore how the concept of co-construction is useful to understand how…

This article examines the discursive production of counsellor identity and practice through the operations of colonising and postcolonial discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand. It argues that constructs of cultural safety, tino rangatiratanga and Maori sovereignty, which arose as part of the postcolonial politics of life in Aotearoa, have achieved…

Current thinking on academic identities is heavily influenced by developments in other disciplines, notably sociology. This accords with Haggis's (2007) challenge for educational researchers to engage with current theory and methods from across the social sciences. However, the traditional sister discipline to education, psychology, seems…

This qualitative study builds on earlier research on language and identity by focusing on how Canadian Generation 1.5 university students enact their identities through talk-in-interaction. Drawing on (applied) Conversational Analysis (CA) to analyze critically the production and management of social institutions in talk-in-interaction in tandem…

In contrast to the abundance of research on women victims, this article sheds light on the discourse of men who are self-identified as victims of their female partners' abuse. The purpose of this study was to investigate the most salient identity constructions and abuse conceptualizations among participants of group psychotherapy for men who have…

This article examines both the discourses upon which Finnish special needs education professors draw when speaking about their field, and the consequent identities for it. The research material consists of theme interviews with 10 professors of special needs education and is analysed from a socio-constructionist, discourse analytical perspective.…